THE HONG KONG government’s refusal to renew the visa of Financial Times reporter Victor Mallet would be yet another blow to press freedoms in Hong Kong. Mallet was the head of the Financial Times’ bureau in Hong Kong, had worked in Hong Kong for two years, and, as the vice president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong (FCC), had previously been the FCC’s acting president in August.

The refusal of the Hong Kong government to renew Mallet’s visa amounts to not only denying Mallet the accreditation he would need to continue working in Hong Kong as a journalist, but exile from Hong Kong. Although British nationals such as Mallet should have six months of visa-free entry to Hong Kong even in the absence of a work visa, Mallet was only given a seven-day tourist visa in order to sort out his affairs. The decision to deny Mallet his work visa may have either come from Beijing or may have been a decision made by the Hong Kong government.

Press freedoms in Hong Kong will be very different going forward, then, as will the dynamics of international media operating in Hong Kong. Given Hong Kong’s deteriorating political freedoms in recent years, Hong Kong previously benefited from that large numbers of journalists driven out of China due to covering sensitive political topics in China took up residence in Hong Kong. This led to significant international coverage of events such as the 2014 Umbrella Movement.

Indeed, the refusal of the Hong Kong government to review Mallet’s visa reminds of previous incidents involving Chinese authorities not agreeing to renew the visas of international journalists working in China. The most famous example of this may have been New York Times reporter Austin Ramzy having his visa renewal denied in 2014 in retribution for covering the large amount of wealth that the families of the political elite possessed for the Times, something which subsequently led to Ramzy relocating to Hong Kong, though this was far from the first such incident in China.

But evidently, Hong Kong is no longer a safe place for press freedoms either. It is to be seen whether the current incident with Victor Mallet leads to international journalists based out of Hong Kong moving elsewhere. The obvious choice would be Taiwan, given its proximity to China, and that it is also a Chinese-speaking country.

Brian Hioe was one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance writer on social movements and politics, and occasional translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.

About New Bloom

New Bloom is an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan and the Asia Pacific, founded in Taiwan in 2014 in the wake of the Sunflower Movement. We seek to put local voices in touch with international discourse, beginning with Taiwan.